LCDProc 0.5.4-dev

Brak

Reinstalled the latest dev package on my Firebox X Core.

LCDProc will not start I guess, the LCD just sits with "Thanks for using pfSense," and its random whether Services reports LCDProc as still running or stopped. Sometimes the server screen stays on and it says "Clients: 0 Server: 0"

Any idea what's my problem?

Feb 12 22:36:23 	LCDd: LCDd version 0.5.5 starting
Feb 12 22:36:23 	LCDd: Using Configuration File: /usr/local/etc/LCDd.conf
Feb 12 22:36:23 	LCDd: Listening for queries on 127.0.0.1:13666
Feb 12 22:36:23 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:24 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:24 	LCDd: Server shutting down on SIGTERM
Feb 12 22:36:26 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:28 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:30 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:32 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:34 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:36 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:38 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:40 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:42 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:44 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)
Feb 12 22:36:46 	php: lcdproc: Start client procedure. Error counter: (0)

stephenw10

Brak, is that just after boot?
I think it's likely that the various delays in the script are causing a problem when the package is started and stopped in quick succession. This is especially true now that the kill loop will stop all running copies of either the client or the server.
In my case simply restarting the package from gui was enough to sort everything out. Given only one stop and start with no time limit it works fine.

Possibilities for some experimenting are:
The start script first kills the client and server then starts it. When sent a restart it effectively does stop-stop-start. Might be better to only have one stop routine?
Reduce or remove the delays in the script.

Steve

mdima

Hi,
yes, there's a problem when the package is resynced in quick succession. Now I am ill at home, and I will be home recovering for the next few days, after that I will investigate and fix the problem (Steve, your suggestions are a very good starting point).

For the moment the package should be started manually when this occurs.

Ciao,
Michele

Brak

@stephenw10:

Brak, is that just after boot?

Actually, it's both. Even using the Services GUI to start or restart the service will lead to this failure. :(

stephenw10

Hmm, well that's interesting.
If you run:
ps aux|grep lcd
or
ps aux|grep LCD
What do you see running when that happens?

My own X-Core box ends up with two LCDd servers running and no client after boot. Different from your box.
Are you running lots of screens?

Steve

stephenw10

I've doing some testing and it looks to me as if we have two factors causing this:

1. The 'stop' script has two 2 second sleep commands in it. It cannot possibly run in less than 4 seconds yet during boot up the service is started (stop-start) three times in that period.
The sleep call seems to me to have been included simply to allow the kill command time to operate. The do-while kill loop now in place would seem to eliminate that need however commenting out the sleep calls does not solve the problem, though it does alter the outcome.

2. The rc script gets stuck in the 'kill loop' causing all manner of trouble!
You can see this as the rc 'start' scipt is still running after boot which should never happen. It is stuck trying to kill one of the other process and failing for some reason. If you kill, LCDd for example, the script is then able to continue and spawns more servers and clients before finishing.

I have found that at least one instance of LCDd runs as root when it should drop to nobody. Does the rc script run as root? Is that why it cannot kill it?

More testing to be done…..

Steve

stephenw10

Although what I wrote above is true if you get an 'un-killable' process the main reason the lcdproc.sh remains running is that it is held open by the php call.
You need to background the process (&) like so:


$start .= "\t/usr/bin/nice -20 /usr/local/bin/php -f /usr/local/pkg/lcdproc_client.php &\n";

Steve

tix

There may have been other factor(s) here [cable modem locked up and wouldn't pass traffic], but at 96 hrs uptime, my display quit again and I couldn't log in again. I've rebooted and will monitor and report.
I think this is just a coincidence but want to report anything that might be an issue.

This time on reboot I have 2 LCDd processes running but can't 'see' lcdproc.sh unless I make my puTTy window wide enough to display the output????


[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][root@pfsense.]/root(6): ps aux | grep lcd

Stretched screen width and repeated command:


[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][root@pfsense.]/root(7): ps aux | grep lcd
root   41210  0.0  0.6  3656  1420  ??  IN   12:59PM   0:00.01 /bin/sh /usr/local/etc/rc.d/lcdproc.sh start
[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][root@pfsense.]/root(8): ps aux | grep LCD
root   51129  0.0  0.5  3352  1164  ??  IN   12:59PM   0:00.01 /usr/local/sbin/LCDd -c /usr/local/etc/LCDd.conf
nobody 51245  0.0  0.6  3368  1424  ??  SNs  12:59PM   0:09.83 /usr/local/sbin/LCDd -c /usr/local/etc/LCDd.conf
[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][root@pfsense.]/root(9):

Not that this is a big deal but weird. Does it happen to anyone else?

stephenw10

Yep same here, I have to maximise the window see it. Also is won't show up at all on the serial console which has a much smaller resolution.
Weird. :-\

I've been playing around with all sorts of things, different delays, different kill commands. I've not once had it boot cleanly. It either boots to two copies of LCDd, one of which is running as root, or kills LCDd completely.

Steve

easyhugo

@mdima:

@easyhugo:

Hi Guys

Is it possible to ad this Lcd to

http://allnet.de/1577.html?&tx_mmallnetproductplugin_pi1[showUid]=421433&cHash=949c8a38a8
ftp://212.18.29.48/ftp/pub/allnet/utility-server/fw8888/lcm_server_1.0.tar.bz2

i,m trying this for some time but with no success, see other posts from me

thx max

Hi Max (easyhugo),
it's impossible to know for me which driver this LCD panel uses… do you know the chipset? Can it use one of the drivers already made or you need another driver?

Ciao,
Michele

Hi
sorry but no driver work with this display, it does not work without these lcm server.

@stephenw10:

My German is very bad! :-[ (Only beaten by my non-existant Italian! ::))

However, according to [url=http://www.ipcop-forum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=26948#p231301]this post by IPCop ledgend Wintermute the display in the FW8888 is an LCM-162.

This doesn't appear to be supported directly by LCDproc but this blog post seems to show it is possible. That's quite old now so support maybe better integrated.

What drivers/versions have you tried?

Steve

Edit: This post confirms this.

and yes wintermute is an excellent ipcop programmer, but ipcop is not an freebsd os so i cant copy the files .
i have tried to copy the lcm to the pfsense and change the config files but with no success.
my test with these lcm if i tried the dev version was not born :D so at now i will connect the guys from allnet how this lcm will work
the answer i would then post

thx

edit:
from the lcm pckage:

Make commands:
Static binary:
gcc –static -o lcm_server lcm_server.c

Dynamic linked binary:
gcc -o lcm_server lcm_server.c

Execution command:
lcm_server /dev/ttyS1 "Banner"

Command FIFO:
/var/run/lcm_cmd

Available commands:
Clear -- Clear the LCM display
Home -- Set the cursor back to row 0, column 0
Display {on/off/nocur} -- Turn display on, off and on without cursor
BKLight {on/off} -- Turn LCM backlight on and off
Setpos {0~1} {0~15} -- Set the cursor position to row and column
Write {text} -- Write the text to LCM start from
current cursor position
Examples:
echo "Display oncur" > /var/run/lcm_cmd
echo "Setpos 0 0" > /var/run/lcm_cmd
echo "Write test message" > /var/run/lcm_cmd

Key FIFO:
/var/run/lcm_key

Available keys: UP, DOWN, RET, ESC

Example:
cat /var/run/lcm_key

Note: There is no key de-bounce mechanism on LCM.
Multiple key response may happen while receiving keys.

mdima

Hi,
as for the problems restarting the package, deleting the "two seconds delay" in the script while killing the package binaries seems to solve the problem.

I will post a new version of the package soon.

Ciao,
Michele

stephenw10

Hi Michele, I hope you're feeling better. :)

Removing the delay(s) completely didn't work for me on my X-Core box. In fact I tried many combinations of delays in different places an failed to get a clean boot.

Steve

mdima

@stephenw10:

Hi Michele, I hope you're feeling better. :)

Removing the delay(s) completely didn't work for me on my X-Core box. In fact I tried many combinations of delays in different places an failed to get a clean boot.

Steve

Hi Steve,
mmhhh… I just had a clean reboot, after that the panel was working and:

[2.0.1-RELEASE][root@pfsense2.domain.nt2.it]/root(18): ps -ax | grep lcd
39543  ??  SN     0:00.91 /usr/local/bin/php -f /usr/local/pkg/lcdproc_client.p
27085  v0- I      0:00.00 /bin/sh /usr/local/etc/rc.d/lcdproc.sh start
13349   0  R+     0:00.00 grep lcd

[2.0.1-RELEASE][root@pfsense2.domain.nt2.it]/root(23): ps -ax | grep LCD        
37346  ??  SNs    0:00.31 /usr/local/sbin/LCDd -c /usr/local/etc/LCDd.conf
 7034   0  S+     0:00.00 grep LCD

I can't find anything wrong. Also restarting the service quickly, or changing the service properties while the service is running, brings me to the above state, which is consistent.

I will investigate more, but until now the only change I did is to remove the "sleep" lines in the "lcdproc.inc" file and saving the configuration (line 506 and "a bit below").

Where did you remove "sleep" lines from?

Thanks,
Michele

mdima

@stephenw10:

Although what I wrote above is true if you get an 'un-killable' process the main reason the lcdproc.sh remains running is that it is held open by the php call.
You need to background the process (&) like so:
$start .= "\t/usr/bin/nice -20 /usr/local/bin/php -f /usr/local/pkg/lcdproc_client.php &\n";
Steve

Hi Steve,
I added the & at the end of the command, and yes the lcdproc.sh is not visible anymore with ps -ax (sorry, I come from Windows and I don't know this tricks).

Btw, I made different "restarts" of the service and a reboot, everything was running and there was only 1 client and 1 server running.

I don't know what is going wrong on your boxes…

Ciao,
Michele

stephenw10

@mdima:

Where did you remove "sleep" lines from?

From lcdproc.inc as you did. I also added a "&" to the call to lcdproc_client.php as I details a few posts back.
I'll try taking that out again.

Edit: You type faster than me!

I am relatively new to FreeBSD also. I only knew to do that because that's how it was called in the old Firebox tarball.

I am starting to think that a lot of this might be down to the speed of the box. The X-Core is a relatively old machine. I'll have to try it on the X-e box for comparison. Alternatively you are using a different driver, perhaps the service is able to stop and start faster?

During the boot process the the package config pages are synced. Because the lcdproc package has two pages both are synced however the lcdproc_screens.xml simply calls the lcdproc.xml sync function. This results in the sync function running twice hence the service is restarted twice. Then slight later in the boot process the WAN interface comes up and receives an IP address, this results in a call to restart all packages again.

I'll run some more tests.

Steve

mdima

@Cino:

the results were blank. I dont have anything set, left it for the system to decide. The dashboard says 299000.. I'll set a value and see what happens. Its been awhile since I looked at the lcdproc code, but I'm thinking there was default 10000 if nothing is set via the gui now that i think about it a little more

This is done, you'll find it in the next release of the package!

Ciao,
Michele

mdima

@stephenw10:

@mdima:

Where did you remove "sleep" lines from?

From lcdproc.inc as you did. I also added a "&" to the call to lcdproc_client.php as I details a few posts back.
I'll try taking that out again.

Edit: You type faster than me!

I am relatively new to FreeBSD also. I only knew to do that because that's how it was called in the old Firebox tarball.

I am starting to think that a lot of this might be down to the speed of the box. The X-Core is a relatively old machine. I'll have to try it on the X-e box for comparison. Alternatively you are using a different driver, perhaps the service is able to stop and start faster?

During the boot process the the package config pages are synced. Because the lcdproc package has two pages both are synced however the lcdproc_screens.xml simply calls the lcdproc.xml sync function. This results in the sync function running twice hence the service is restarted twice. Then slight later in the boot process the WAN interface comes up and receives an IP address, this results in a call to restart all packages again.

I'll run some more tests.

Steve

Hi Steve,
so good, you removed the delays exactly where I was removing them from, so nothing to say about that.

If is true, the package is synced twice during the reboot, I don't know how to avoid that (without forcing a manual service restart every time someone changes a setting in the "screens" page), but I confirm you after some reboot, that on my hardware this do not give any problem (X3460 Xeon, SSD HD, Intel dual port NICs, 4GB ram, Sureelect USB panel 20x4, but ok, I understand that like this is easy, I know)…

As for my situation, I achived a total stable situation. I will release the latest changes asap...

Ciao,
Michele

mdima

Released!

The changelog is the following:

The Client now runs in background (added a trailing & at the end of the command that runs the client);
Removed the delays in the script during the service stop;
Fixed the "default max states" information when it is not defined explicitally in the advanced configuration.

Should be the most stable LCDProc ever released… hope will fix (or at least minimize) the issues on all the boxes...

Thanks,
Michele

stephenw10

Nice! :)

One possible solution to the number of restarts might be to add some code to prevent a restart being called unless a change to the config has been made.
Currently:


			/* or restart lcdproc if settings were changed*/
			if(is_service_running(LCDPROC_SERVICE_NAME)) {
				lcdproc_notice("Sync: Restarting the service");
				restart_service(LCDPROC_SERVICE_NAME);

But in fact it restarts whether changes have been made or not.

Or possibly have two separate sync funtions, one that restarts LCDd when you sync lcdproc.xml and one the restarts the lcdproc_client.php when you sync lcdproc_screens.xml.

Maybe just something like this:
Replace:


function sync_package_lcdproc_screens() {
		sync_package_lcdproc();
	}

With:


function sync_package_lcdproc_screens() {
		if(is_service_running(LCDPROC_SERVICE_NAME)) {
		lcdproc_notice("Sync: Restart PHP Client");
		mwexec("ps auxw |awk '/lcdproc_client.ph[p]/ {print $2}'|xargs kill");
		mwexec("/usr/bin/nice -20 /usr/local/bin/php -f /usr/local/pkg/lcdproc_client.php &");
		}
	}

That would at least reduce the times LCDd is restarted. I don't know if it actually has to do any syncing or whether that's all handled by the pfSense package system. ::)

Steve

stephenw10

Unfortunately it's not booting cleanly on the X-Core box. Imdediately after boot:


[2.0.1-RELEASE][root@x-core.localdomain]/root(4): ps aux | grep lcd
root    2368  0.0  0.6  3656  1356  ??  IN    1:15AM   0:00.05 /bin/sh /usr/local/etc/rc.d/lcdproc.sh start
root    4742  0.0  6.9 36188 16956  ??  SN    1:15AM   0:00.46 /usr/local/bin/php -f /usr/local/pkg/lcdproc_client.php
[2.0.1-RELEASE][root@x-core.localdomain]/root(5): ps aux | grep LCD
root   36882  0.0  0.5  3352  1148  ??  IN    1:15AM   0:00.01 /usr/local/sbin/LCDd -c /usr/local/etc/LCDd.conf
nobody 37026  0.0  0.6  3368  1472  ??  SNs   1:15AM   0:00.17 /usr/local/sbin/LCDd -c /usr/local/etc/LCDd.conf

The interesting thing is that the first instance of LCDd is still running as root because it fails to start correctly. Probably because it is trying to start on port 13666 but there is already an instance of LCDd running on 13666 at that point.
The odd thing is that it is not killed by the startup script hence the kill-loop gets stuck and lcdproc.sh is still running.

Steve